KING OF MALAPROPISMS

KING OF MALAPROPISMS

By Mad Plato

George W. Bush, the War President, doesn’t care whether you know when he knows when he is not saying a word correctly.

I was a C student at a university with buildings that were covered with ivy.

I was a C student because I flirted too much with my French teacher.

She was a cute blond from southern France.

It was my second semester of conversational French.

However, my first semester teacher was a pretty brunette from Northern France, and she was old enough to be my mother.

I behaved in class.

I received that D because I sometimes (on purpose) mixed Spanish with my French when I spoke in class.

This infuriated cute Mademoiselle, and my GPA suffered dearly:

I now had FOUR CREDIT HOURS OF D!

The War President should hire a person who can make sure that tongue twisters are pronounced correctly.

Practice more, George.

The War President should care more about pronouncing his words correctly. However, based upon the high recidivism of his many utterances of malapropisms, the War President doesn’t seem to care.

I would be more understanding if this problem had happened maybe once or twice, but I have now heard the president mispronounce the same word two or three times. He has said REMINANTS for REMNANTS more than once.

And good grief, what about the way he’s murdering the name of that Iraqi prison.

No need to destroy the prison, because its name has already been destroyed.

None of this criticism is personal.

I don’t like it when I mispronounce (or think that I have mispronounced) a word.

I remember when I tried to appear smarter than I was in high school by using BIG words, and then realized later that I had not been pronouncing them correctly!

I suppose such a sin of omission is just as bad (or worse) as when a word is pronounced incorrectly and the speaker knows that it is being mispronounced.

As a whole (not hole) the language is getting “lazier and lazier” because its speakers have gotten lazier and lazier.

For example, Americans are great users of THE CONTRACTION.

Our brethren in Great Britain tend to say all of the words instead of “contracting” them.

It sounds more sophisticated and more intelligent.

Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t.

In this age of “Hip-Hop and Rap”, we have forsaken the thought process by shortening our speech patterns.

I sometimes find myself curtailing the number of words when I say something.

For example, instead of saying, “Everyone should try to be good” I might say “You be good.”

Yes, and you might say, “I like the second version.

It is easier to understand and not so long.”

But that is the point.

We want thoughts and ideas to be simple, compact, and “easy to understand”.

We understand “I’LL BE BACK” and “MAKE MY DAY” and “BRING ‘EM ON” because they are short and simple.

America has become a culture of one-liners and SOUND BITES.

We want the Cliff Notes explanation, not the long version.

But to think and speak clearly require more time and effort.

Perhaps that is why the War President doesn’t want to be bothered with pronouncing words correctly.